The above is obviously the 3D view of the baby's face.  In the photos below, the top left photo is of the baby's heart, the top right photo is the baby's footprint, and the bottom right photo is the baby's arm and hand.

The doctor said everything is completely normal, so that's a huge relief!  It is truly an amazing experience to see your baby's face – even though you really can't tell what he/she will look like from the above, it's amazing to look at that face and know that it is your child's face that you're seeing for the first time.  And their spine, and ribs, and legs, and feet, and arms, and hands, etc., etc.

We still don't know if the baby is a boy or girl, and don't plan to find out.  The ultrasound skimmed over the "crotchal region" a few times, and I have to admit that I was looking pretty damned close, but I didn't see anything.  Whether that's because the ultrasound is so blurry and weird looking and I don't know how to read one anyway, or whether I didn't see anything because there's nothing there to see and the baby is a girl, I have no idea.

Anyway, a very cool day and great to know that our baby appears to be healthy in all respects!

Five more months to go!

It’s Thursday afternoon – about 5:37pm – here in Vietnam.  Tomorrow’s the day we see our baby in 3D.  Thao and I are very excited, and I’m also a little nervous.  Just kind of weird to think that you’re going to be seeing your child’s face for the first time – and I guess the main purpose of the 3D ultrasound is to make sure the baby is okay, no major defects, etc., so that’s scary too.  I’m just generally a little freaked out, I guess.

I went to the gym again today – did 33 minutes on the upright bike and burned 300 calories, then did 30 minutes on the treadmill and burned 312 calories.  I’ve been working out like crazy but haven’t lost but a couple of pounds – maybe I’m putting on muscle weight and muscle weighs more than fat?  That’s what I’ll tell myself at least.  My rowing machine will be here any day now – I can’t wait.

My old Xbox 360 died a few months ago and a friend of mine brought me a new one from the U.S.  A couple of weeks ago I finally got it hacked so that I can play bootleg games again and I just finished playing Red Dead Redemption – which is a Rockstar Games that is very similar to the Grand Theft Auto games except set in the old west.  I enjoyed it – although probably not as much as I enjoyed GTAIV.  A good storyline and a lot of fun missions.

I finished reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell a week or so ago.  Sadly, I didn’t think it was that great – not as good or unique as the prior books I’d read by Mitchell (Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green).  I thought the story was fairly predictable and just generally not that inspiring.  Well-written, of course, but just not as good as I expected.  I read that book on my iPad and, as I’ve written before, reading books on the iPad’s screen is really not that great.  Which is why I was very excited to hear today that Amazon just released a new version of the Kindle.  It’s smaller, lighter, has more memory, and has a better screen, and they now offer a wi-fi-only model for only $139.  That’s pretty sweet considering that the original Kindle was $399 when it came out.  I still think $99 is the sweet spot for a single-purpose ereader, but hell $139 is not far off the mark.  I’m not going to rush out and get one, but I can see myself getting a Kindle at some point in the future.  (I’m still loving the iPad for everything else – web browsing, Twitter, watching movies, games, etc.)

I watched a very interesting film yesterday – a documentary called The Most Dangerous Man in America about the military consultant Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers back in 1971.  I had gotten interested in the Pentagon Papers again as a result of this Wikileaks thing last week, read something about that documentary, and was able to download it.  Extremely interesting, very timely, and I highly recommend it.

It did not take Thao long to seize our new motorbike.  She had initially thought she wouldn’t ride it until after she has the baby and recovers because it’s a little bigger and heavier than my old motorbike that she’s been riding since she got pregnant.  But she test drove the new motorbike last night and really liked it – then quickly decided it wasn’t too heavy and took it to work today.  So I’m back to my old Honda (which I love, but still . . . the new one!).

I guess that’s all I’ve got right now.  Hopefully I’ll have an image or two of our baby to post late tomorrow afternoon.  Peace!

According to Babycenter.com, the above is what our baby looks like right now at 19 weeks.  I hope not.  That drawing freaks me out.  I guess we’ll find out tomorrow (Friday) when we see the 3D ultrasound.

Elliptical machine:  30 minutes, 310 calories;

Treadmill:  33 minutes, 400 calories.

We just bought a new motorbike for Thao.  I say "cough" above because she's going to use my old Honda until after the baby is born and she's all recovered, etc., because the Honda is a little smaller and lighter than the new one.  The new one is a Yamaha Nouvo.  A buddy of mine bought for 28 million dong (about $1,500) back in November.  He's moving back to the U.S. now and sold it to us for 17 million dong – about $900.  It's pretty much like the one pictured above except it's all black.  I just picked it up from him at 3:00pm today, took it for a test spin, had the oil changed, got it washed, etc.  It rides great.  Thao really needed a new bike as her old bike was not that great to begin with and is also 5 or 6 years old now and having a lot of problems.  With the baby coming I wanted something a little more reliable for her.  And I'm going to enjoy using it for the time being!

I can't wait until this comes out – apparently it will be soon:  

I'm buying it for sure.

[I'm using my old fav' minimalist word processor, Q10, to type this.  It's not perfect, but it's the best I've been able to find.  Anyway, if the formatting on this post is messed up, that's why.]

Not too much blogging recently and that’s because there’s not too much going on.  We just started Week 6 of our 12-week semester, so right in the thick of things.  My classes are all going fine.

I’m really enjoying our school’s new gym and I’ve been hitting it pretty hard.  Between last Sunday and this past Saturday I worked out three times for a total of 2,268 calories.  Then this past Sunday (yesterday) I worked out for two hours and burned 1,122 calories.  All cardio stuff.  I know I should do some strength training, but I like the cardio too much.  Also, I shipped my rowing machine from the U.S. to Vietnam when I was home in June, and that will be here in the next couple of weeks.  (I shipped by boat so it was cheap but takes a long time – about 40 days.)  That’s one reason I’ve been working out so much – to get in cardio shape so I’ll be ready to hit the rowing machine hard once it gets here.

Thao continues to do great.  We’re in Week 19 now, so almost halfway there.  She’s felt really good the whole way through so far, so we feel really lucky about that.  Her belly is getting huge – I can’t imagine how big it will be in five more months.  We go to the doctor this Friday for our 3D ultrasound, so we should be seeing our baby’s face for the first time.  Crazy!  We’re very excited, but I have to admit I feel a little freaked out by it.  I just hope they look normal, etc.  Also, I’ve been trying for months now to imagine a baby that has half of Thao’s features and half of my features, and I just can’t do it.  Not that we’ll be able to tell too much from the ultrasound, but it’s going to be very interesting to me to even get an idea of what this little baby is going to look like.

I went today to the U.S. immigration office here to check on getting an immigrant visa for Thao.  (You deal with the U.S. Consulate for non-immigrant visas like we tried to get before, and with the immigration office for immigrant visas.)  I was going to see if we could go ahead and get her an immigrant visa even though we don’t have any immediate plans to return to the U.S. to live permanently, or even semi-permanently. 

But we can’t.  You have to have plans to return to the U.S. to live no more than a year out from when you’re applying for the visa.  Also, it’s apparently easier to get and you get a longer-term visa (10 years vs. 2 years) if you’ve been married at least two years.

I guess the good news is we’re not in any hurry, so we can just wait until we’ve been married two years – which is actually February 2012.  (Our wedding ceremony was December 26, but we did not get our marriage certificate from the Vietnamese government until February 10, 2010.)  And even February 2012 only if we have plans to return to the U.S. sometime in the next year after that.  Who knows?

I can’t think of anything else that’s going on here.  We’re very baby-focused right now, so we’re probably very boring to all of our friends and family.  And you know once this kid is born this blog is going to turn into nothing but a baby photo collection.  (I’m joking now, but I’m probably really not that far off.)

Peace!

I guess they’ve got the oil well capped, but if this storm goes right through that area and whips up all of the oil already in the water, that can’t be good.